in.] DISTRIBUTION OF LAND IN ENGLAND. 11 



Again, the quantity of land held sufficient for an 

 Anglo-Saxon family was called a hide. Now the 

 average hide cannot be estimated at less than 200 

 acres a quantity obviously greater than that which 

 could be cultivated by the owner and his family 

 alone. The work was, in all probability, done by 

 geneat or gebur labour. There is no reason to 

 suppose that the Anglo-Saxons were less inclined to 

 employ forced labour, than the Dutch were a few 

 years ago (if not at present) in the Transvaal. 



But whilst the hide appears to have been the 

 minimum allotment, we meet with constant allusions 

 in Anglo-Saxon laws and documents, to proprietors 

 of five, of twenty, and even a much greater number 

 of hides. 



There is therefore, strong reason for believing that 

 in the earliest Saxon period, there were proprietors 

 of very large estates; and, as soon as the light of 

 history breaks upon us, it reveals their existence. 

 Etheldreda, an Anglian princess, in the seventh 

 century, gave, it is said, the Isle of Ely to the abbey 

 which she established. The Ealdorman Edric, in the 

 days of Ethelred the Unready, could turn the scale 

 in the struggle for supremacy between the Danes 

 and the English. The manors of Earl Godwin are 

 said to have stretched almost continuously through 

 the county of Sussex. Domesday Book shows that 

 the Earls Morcar, Edwin and Tosti (the brother of 

 Harold) had vast possessions. In Cambridgeshire 



